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It started with a simple question.
“Tomura-nii, do you know when Kurogiri’s birthday is?” Izuku asked. Tomura could only stare blankly at the nine-year-old boy, mind briefly going blank. He should know this. He’d spent most of his life under Kurogiri’s care, or at least as far as he could remember. That meant he’d spent years with the man.
“...I don’t,” he admitted with a frown.
So how didn’t he know that?
Aiko also stared blankly when asked. “Define birthday,” she said after a long moment. The two boys just smacked their foreheads in frustration.
“Come on, you saw his file or whatever back when Sensei was still here!” Tomura argued. “It must’ve mentioned his birthday!”
Aiko thought back to the file. To the detailed log of observations and adjustments. To the acquisition of experimental materials date.
To the autopsy report of a teenage boy barely older than she herself had been.
“Define birthday,” she repeated, and the boys smacked their foreheads again.
So, to recap: they had no idea when Kurogiri’s birthday was, and Kurogiri probably wouldn’t know it either. According to Izuku, that was a travesty which must be rectified as soon as possible. If Tomura had learned anything from having Izuku around, it was that you did not argue with him on being nice to others. That just got you a wobbly pout and tearful ramble about how important it was.
They didn’t know his birthday, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t celebrate it. After this long, he deserved a party. Which meant they had to plan said party.
At this point, it should be noted that literally none of them had any experience with planning a party.
“Birthdays usually have cake and presents, right?” Aiko reasoned. “I can bake the cake, you guys can get the presents.”
“Have you ever baked before?” Tomura asked skeptically.
“Tomura, I’m nineteen and a chemist. It can’t be that hard.”
And sure enough, it wasn’t. Aiko had zero problems and made a delicious, if somewhat messy looking, chocolate cake.
The real story lies in the disaster that was fourteen-year-old Tomura and nine-year-old Izuku’s first unsupervised shopping trip.
Standing in the center of the mall, both wearing inconspicuous hoodies to hide their more distinctive traits, Tomura had to admit another unpleasant detail to himself:
He had absolutely no idea what to get Kurogiri.
After seven/eightish years of living with the man, Tomura had absolutely no idea what Kurogiri liked. The man barely seemed to have a personality of his own at times.
Sometimes, he... read books? He also seemed to be good at making cocktails, maybe? According to Aiko anyway? (Not that she’d had any, she was just repeating what others had said.) And he was good with maps and coordinates, he had a bunch in his room. Maybe he’d like a really fancy, pretty map? Did any of these stores even sell maps? Or, did he only have maps because of his Quirk?
Yeah, Tomura had no idea where to start. And having only met the man a year ago, Izuku had even less ideas.
Izuku had also spied a store full of hero merchandise.
“Oh my gosh, an Endeavor hoodie!” he gasped, eyes sparkling as he was drawn to the mannequins displayed in the window. “And oh my gosh that shirt has Thirteen on it, I’ve barely seen any Thirteen merchandise yet because she’s still so new—that shirt looks just like Lady Nagant’s costume but in shirt form, oh my gosh— ”
His babbling cut off as Tomura hooked a finger around his shirt and yanked him back, making him yelp. “Eyes on the prize, Izuku,” he said as he dragged the boy away. “Remember, we’re here on a mission. No room for side-quests.” Izuku pouted but nodded, reminding himself of their mission.
Five minutes later, he pouted even harder as Tomura stood in front of a game store, staring at a display for some new game. Izuku didn’t even think the game looked that fun, it had some medieval knights and a dragon. But Tomura seemed to see it as the most fascinating thing in the world. “How did the release date sneak up on me?” he hissed. “There’s only a week left until it drops, I need to—”
“No, bad Tomura!” Izuku interrupted, pulling on his arm to drag him away. “No side quests!”
If he couldn’t geek out over hero merchandise, Tomura couldn’t geek out over video games.
Either way, they still had zero idea on what to get Kurogiri.
“There’s so many stores, there’s gotta be something!” Izuku declared, ever the optimist. “We just need to look until we find it! Like—like clothes!” He perked up. “He always wears the same outfit, let’s get him a new shirt!”
Clothes were the absolute most boring gift in the world. Tomura would rather get a new game. But then, Kurogiri was an adult. So maybe that would work. “Fine,” he said, and the two headed for the nearest clothing store.
This led to the next unpleasant realization.
“Why are there so many sizes?” Tomura asked, nose wrinkling as he stared at the rows and rows of clothing racks. Everything was sorted by size. He didn’t even realize that was a thing! Kurogiri and Sensei just bought all his clothes for him, he’d never realized they came in different sizes.
In games, clothes were one-size-fits-all. You get equipment, and it fits, no need to fuss over sizes. In retrospect, he should have realized the real world was different. After all, Izuku’s clothes certainly wouldn’t fit him.
Also, he had no idea what sizes Kurogiri wore.
“What about this one?” Izuku asked, holding up a shirt that was twice as wide and tall as himself.
“That’s way too big.”
“This one?” Izuku held up a slightly smaller one. Slightly, in that it didn’t drag on the floor when he held it.
“Still too big.”
“This one’s the smallest on the wall—”
“Maybe this size?” Tomura grabbed a shirt from a different rack altogether, making sure to keep his pinkie finger lifted as he held it up. This one seemed to be made for a standard human-ish body, unlike the ones Izuku selected. Seriously, even the apparent smallest one was still barely shorter than him—
Actually, wait, didn’t that sign on the wall where Izuku got all the shirts say giant heteromorphs? That would explain why they were so big.
“Leave that wall alone, let’s look at the other racks.”
“But the designs are so cool,” Izuku mumbled with a pout, but obligingly returned the shirt to browse other racks.
Which brought the next point: they had no idea what style Kurogiri would like. The guy only ever wore stiff, formal-looking clothes, so they wanted to go away from that for once. Get him something that actually looked comfortable. They just needed to figure out what suited his tastes.
“I don’t think he’d like that though,” Tomura said flatly as Izuku held up a shirt that literally said “shirt.”
“I think it’s great though!”
“Yeah, pretty sure he wouldn’t like it.” He turned to a neighboring rack, which held nothing but pants. Tomura had even less idea what sort of pants he’d like as opposed to shirts. Kurogiri only ever wore neatly pressed slacks after all. He pulled off a pair of jeans, and froze.
“...Hey, Izuku?”
“Yeah Tomura-nii?”
“Can you imagine Kurogiri wearing jeans?”
Izuku paused, trying to picture that. His brain then promptly crashed, error, does not compute, abortabortabort—
“Put it back!” he whined, and Tomura did just that, shoving it at the rack. In his haste his fingers slipped though, his pinkie brushing the denim—
And then both boys were left staring at an empty hanger and a pile of dust.
“Should we leave?” Izuku asked after a moment.
“We should leave,” Tomura agreed, and the two promptly fled the store.
Once outside they regrouped at a fountain in the center of the mall, still empty-handed and no closer to finding a gift for Kurogiri. “Clothes probably won’t work,” Tomura huffed. “And I got no better ideas.”
“There’s still gotta be something!” Izuku declared. “It hasn’t even been half an hour yet, so we still have an hour and a half before we’re supposed to go back! There’s so many places to look!”
“Yeah, I guess,” Tomura huffed. “Fine. Let’s split up.” That had Izuku pausing, losing some of his fire.
“Split up?” he repeated timidly.
“There’s too many stores to visit before the time limit expires. Let’s split up. I take this half of the mall,” he made a sweeping gesture to their left, “and you take the other half. Text me with any loot you find.”
“...O-okay,” Izuku said with a small nod, still nervous but trying to be brave. With that the pair split up, each heading their own ways.
Tomura still had zero idea what Kurogiri would want, so he went with what little he’d figured out earlier: books, cocktails, and maps. A bookstore was nearby, so he went there first. Upon entering, he got lucky and spied a rack full of fabric book totes near the entrance. He grabbed one and went to the shelves, beginning to search for books.
Oh look, a book on maps. And there was a book on cocktails. There was a whole table full of books marked “best sellers” so they must be good, right? That one even had fog on the cover! Kurogiri would like that, right?
And so it went for about half an hour before he departed, his book tote weighed down with his new loot... and completely ignoring the cashier.
At this point, it should be noted that Aiko’s upbringing was... sheltered. Not in the “overprotective parents” way, but in the “never really understood normal” way. She got a late introduction to proper society, which meant she had to be taught many things that most kids picked up through natural osmosis.
That included shopping.
Her guardians took her on several shopping trips with the explicit purpose of teaching her how to actually shop like a normal human being. They showed her how to treat salestaff. How to check prices. How to choose the best produce at a grocery store, how to use coupons, how to look for damaged clothing so they could potentially request a discount, and if that didn’t work how to gracefully accept that and buy an undamaged clothing item at full-price—
Point was, she basically got given a very direct lesson on shopping.
And during those lessons, they told her to do what she did best: she observed.
She watched the other shoppers go about their days. Watched people check sizes on various articles of clothing. Watched how several went straight for discount racks and bins at various stores. Watched taller customers help shorter ones reach higher shelves.
Watched three different children at three different stores go to the register, alone, to purchase a treat or snack with small change.
With her sheltered upbringing, she reached the conclusion that all children likely received this same lesson. She had just received it later than most.
So of course, it stood to reason that Izuku and Tomura would be no different. Izuku’s mother had seemed like a good, doting parent, and so had his dad from the stories she heard. And while Tomura didn’t remember his parents (probably for the best, maybe?), he had Kurogiri. Kurogiri was a very responsible adult-like figure, surely he taught Tomura in place of his parents.
This would be her later explanation when asked by Kurogiri why she sent Tomura and Izuku to a mall unsupervised.
In her immortal words: “How was I supposed to know Tomura didn’t know you need to pay for stuff?”
Izuku, fortunately, did know how shopping worked at its most basic roots. He hadn’t been given a specific lesson on how to shop, but he’d gone shopping with his mother enough times to at least know he needed to pay for whatever he bought.
That was where his knowledge ended.
Compared to Tomura (who thought that paying for stuff in games was just a game balance thing), Izuku had even more disadvantages. He had next to no knowledge of Kurogiri’s interests, and even less room to guess. He had zero idea what adults might like, he was only nine.
Let it be repeated: Izuku was nine. He was nine, a child still easily distracted by shiny things.
Shiny, hero-related things.
Needless to say, within ten minutes of parting with Tomura he was in the very same hero shop that had drawn him in the first place, ogling the merchandise in awe.
There was just so many cool things here! Not just clothes, but action figures, and posters, and photographs, and books, and toys! Izuku hadn’t seen this much hero merchandise in one place since—since—
His mood fell, shoulders falling as cold, hard reality washed over him.
He hadn’t seen this much hero merchandise since before mom and dad died.
Izuku hadn’t visited a hero store once since then. Even his new bedroom was tragically bare. Kurogiri and Aiko had gotten all of his hero merchandise from his family’s apartment, but Tomura didn’t like it, so they had to keep most of it stored away. Especially the All Might stuff. Tomura had actually destroyed one of Izuku’s All Might action figures, much to his eternal dismay.
All he had in his room right now were a couple of posters for heroes mostly unrelated to All Might. A stylized Yoroi Musha poster his dad found in America somehow, how cool was that?, that Put Your Hands Up! Radio poster his mom surprised him with before the show even started airing, that autographed poster from Team Storm Chaser he got for his birthday...
Three posters. Three measly posters, featuring heroes Izuku still adored and respected, but didn’t idolize nearly as much as All Might.
Three posters which felt insignificant compared to everything here.
A sudden hollowness settled in Izuku’s chest, fists clenching at his sides as he sucked in a sharp breath. It wasn’t just the hero merchandise or All Might stuff, but also the memories attached to them. So many of them were gifts from people who cared about him, who wanted to show they cared about his interests.
(The figure Tomura decayed came from Kacchan.)
“Hey, kiddo, everything okay?”
He startled at the voice, whipping around to find a blond man leaning down near him with a worried frown. He blinked, vision blurry, and then realized, oh. He was crying. He sniffled and fiercely rubbed his eyes with his sleeve. “I’m f-fine,” he croaked.
“You don’t really sound or look fine,” the man said gently. “Are your parents around here?”
Izuku froze, staring wide-eyed as the soul-crushing loss crashed over him again, and then burst into more tears.
Meanwhile, Tomura had learned another thing: teenagers were not allowed to get alcohol.
“It’s not for me though, it’s for my guardian’s birthday!” he protested with a scowl. “I don’t even know why adults like this stuff, it all tastes gross!”
“Sorry kid, rules are rules,” the cashier said with a shrug, and Tomura scowled as he stomped away, bags bouncing at his side. This was stupid. The mall didn’t have any stores that specialized in maps, and all he had were books! Books were the second lamest gift after clothing, not counting game guides. Game guides were great, but tragically probably not something Kurogiri would like.
...Maybe he should get a co-op game to play with Kurogiri. He often said spending time with Tomura brought him great pleasure and all that, so that might work.
Which is how he ended up at the game store Izuku had dragged him away from, perusing the co-op games. Emphasis on co-op, not multiplayer. A game where they’d compete probably wouldn’t appeal to Kurogiri, so a game with cooperative mechanics was his best bet. It’d be kinda like taking care of him, but in a video game, right?
Except, he had no idea what co-op games even existed.
Tomura, for most of his life, had been a solo player by necessity. Sensei didn’t like games, that doctor guy was too creepy, Kurogiri barely understood how controllers worked sometimes... Aiko-nee was the first one he’d met with any remote possibility of playing with him, but she’d been largely unimpressed and kept trying to push anime onto him instead.
He now had Izuku as a potential player two, but the kid still had much to learn before they could play together. The same could also be said for Kurogiri, but he had taken care of Tomura for years now, so he kinda felt like the guy deserved some patience on his end.
Anyways, point was, he had no reason to ever care about co-op games before. So he had no idea what games were even good. Luckily for him, he didn’t need to look for very long before an employee approached him.
“This one is great for non-gamers,” the employee said, smiling as he pulled one from the shelf. It had a pair of characters made from what looked like yarn on the cover, explaining, “It’s a puzzle-platformer where you both need to work together to solve the puzzles. And this one,” he pulled another from the shelf showing ships, “has you basically sailing around the world and maintaining the ship. Has split-screen for couch co-op.”
“How about that one?” Tomura asked, pointing to a game with what looked like a bartender on the cover. A fantasy bartender, mind you, given the glowing drinks lining the shelves.
“Yeah, Mistry-Mixr’s great too,” the employee said cheerfully. “You work together to mix enchanted drinks with effects based on clients’ requests. Has a roguelite element too, because you gotta go to dungeons to get ingredients.”
“I’ll take them all,” Tomura declared, and followed the cashier to the register.
Now, while it did not come directly from a video game, there was still one important lesson he’d learned as a gamer: piracy was wrong. He’d first learned this when, while looking up videos on how to beat a pesky boss, he found a video showing how pirated copies of the game rigged that boss to be invincible. And then he found another video where piracy led to the player’s weapons being replaced with a pig gun. And another where the player was upside-down.
That whole rabbithole had led him to reading several impassioned articles about why pirating games was so immoral and harmful to the industry. Of how a few indie developers had been shut down because piracy cut into their profit margin too much. And how developers deserved recognition (and pay) for their hard work.
So Tomura had no problems handing over the credit card Aiko had lent him to pay for the games. The clerk cheerfully loaded them into a bag and handed it to him, letting Tomura slide them into the book totes with the other books. With that, he left the store with his legally purchased games, feeling quite satisfied with himself.
(It still didn’t occur to him that he was supposed to pay at all stores.)
So. Izuku got a Gang Orca plushie from the blond man as a present, if only because adults who wanted to make small children stop crying tended to do so through giving them toys. That was nice. Turns out sometimes crying did help.
Crying did not help explain that no, he was okay on his own, his brother was nearby and he was just sad his parents—and that’s when he burst into tears again because he couldn’t bring himself to say the word die.
Yeah.
So Izuku might have taken off running from the store and darted to another store to hide. One which turned out to be... less than child friendly. Not that he understood, being nine and all. Despite now living with technical villains, the Villain Alliance had yet to truly start forming, meaning he only ever saw Kurogiri, Tomura and Aiko. So he had yet to lose much of his innocence.
Which made for a very embarrassing memory years later when he abruptly realized he’d hidden inside a circular rack of lingerie.
And then red-faced sputtering as he realized the context of the conversation he’d overheard, and oh dear All Might he got that for Kurogiri.
“Ya know, this movie would make a pretty sweet gift,” one man commented, Izuku’s ears perking up to the word gift.
“Yeah,” someone else chuckled. “The gift of great adult entertainment.”
Gift? Entertainment? Adult entertainment? Entertainment was basically stuff you enjoyed in your free time like movies or TV shows or books! Izuku didn’t know there was special entertainment for adults! He cautiously parted the lacey nightgowns just enough to peek through them, spying a trio of adults standing in front of a shelf of movies.
“Seriously, imagine getting something like this for a gift,” the first guy said nonchalantly as he held a DVD case.
“It’d be one memorable birthday,” guy number two agreed lightly, making Izuku’s ears perk even further. Birthday! Birthday present!
“Alright, alright, I can take a hint,” the third guy grunted. “I’m not getting you that one though! I want there to be some surprise!” The first guy put the DVD back and the trio meandered off, Izuku staring at it with a pounding heart.
Kurogiri seemed to barely do anything purely for himself. He just took care of them, and kinda... existed. He deserved something to help him relax and have fun, the way Izuku had fun watching hero fights and Tomura had fun playing games and Aiko had fun watching anime! And if those guys were right, this would be the perfect option.
Except, it was an adult movie. For adults. Izuku knew that kids couldn’t buy adult things like alcohol or games rated for adult audiences, Aiko-nee and Kurogiri had to buy those for Tomura after all. (The games, not the alcohol. Kurogiri was very firm none of them could have alcohol yet, not even Aiko.) So the same rule probably applied to other adult things, including adult movies.
Yes, it does! future Izuku mentally screamed as he lived through the memory years later. So don’t do it! Be a good boy and leave!
But little Izuku couldn’t hear himself in the future, and he couldn’t back down. This was for Kurogiri.
Future Izuku mentally screamed in anguish and wished for death as he remembered his past self racing out from his hiding spot to swipe two random DVDs from the shelf before fleeing. He had to wonder what the poor cashier must’ve thought of the green blur that zipped past the register to race out the door while flinging money at the register. Because even if he was too young to buy an adult movie, he still needed to pay.
And so future Izuku withered and curled into a ball on the floor as his little self absconded from the store with his two new “purchases,” and fled down the crowded mall walkway. He kept running until he spied his brother, clearly searching for him, and ran right to him.
And crashed right into Tomura.
Izuku fell to the ground with an oof after the collision, the older boy remaining standing. “Izuku, you okay?” he asked, not offering a hand to help him up because he’d rather not risk accidentally dusting his brother.
“Y-yeah, I’m fine,” Izuku sniffled, rubbing his eyes as he got up. He was a big boy so he would not cry just because his butt felt a little sore from that fall. “I got some gifts for Giri!”
“Me too,” Tomura said casually. “Got some books and co-op games.”
“That’s super cool! I got him these two movies!” Izuku proudly held up the two movies he’d secured. “Can I put them in your bag?”
“Sure,” Tomura agreed, and Izuku cheerfully slid them into the bag. Partially so that no one would realize he was carrying adult movies and take them away, though he didn’t tell Tomura that.
(One of the few merciful things for future Izuku was that, in his haste to flee the store, he never actually saw the DVDs he grabbed, so he had no idea what the covers held. That was one detail he’d happily leave a big mystery, as he was sure the knowledge would lead to him becoming a shut-in for the rest of his life due to sheer embarrassment.)
“What’s with the toy?” Tomura asked, eyes narrowing, and Izuku perked up.
“I cried and a nice man gave it to me!” He hugged the Gang Orca doll with a bright smile, but then paused, his smile slowly fading as he remembered the last time he showed Tomura hero merchandise. “You... you won’t destroy it, right? L-like last time? It’s Gang Orca, he’s not—um, y-you know...”
He trailed off nervously, hugging Gang Orca a little tighter as he waited for the answer.
“Hah, whatever,” Tomura sighed. “I think we’ve got enough loot. Let’s just go.”
Izuku perked up and bobbed his head, bright smile returning. “R-right!”
With that, the pair started for the side entrance Aiko had long designated as their exit point. Because while they never really went to the mall before, Aiko was still overly paranoid and had made a point to designate exit/meeting points at various buildings and made them all memorize it. This entrance had no working cameras, so it was a perfect place for Kurogiri to discreetly open a warp gate.
And they almost got there when something caught Izuku’s eye and made him stop, leading Tomura to sigh. “What now?”
“That store has Present Mic merchandise,” Izuku said, and Tomura scoffed. The kid was looking at a music store, which, just as he said, had Present Mic posters in the store’s window along with various other actual musicians.
“Hah, why is he even selling stuff in a music store?” Tomura asked irritably. “Isn’t he just loud? What’s he got to do with music?”
“He plays music on his radio show,” Izuku replied. “And, I just remembered... Doesn’t Kurogiri listen to that too?”
Tomura froze, thinking back silently. And sure enough, Izuku was right. It was so easy to conjure up an image of Kurogiri sitting at a counter with a radio playing in the background, idly wiping down dishes as that grating voice yabbed on about some new song or whatever. He even turned it up during interviews, instead of down like a reasonable person.
Huh.
And so, the brothers made one last stop. A stop which turned out to be a jackpot of sorts, because the store actually had a whole wall of Present Mic stuff. Posters, t-shirts, figurines—even album cover parodies with him in place of the singer!
Izuku was in hero fan heaven. Tomura was more or less indifferent to it.
But still, this was for Kurogiri, so they put their best effort into choosing what to get. Which is how they ended up with multiple Present Mic shirts in varying sizes at Izuku’s insistence.
“If we wear them, we can all match!” he declared proudly.
The thought of wearing a shirt with a hero on it made Tomura’s nose wrinkle in disgust, but Izuku’s puppy dog eyes made it clear saying that wouldn’t go over well. If only because it would probably make him cry. “Fine,” he sighed, shoving the shirts in the bags. “Come on Izuku, let’s go.”
He started for the door, but was stopped when Izuku grabbed his sleeve. “Tomura-nii, what are you doing?” the little boy asked with a frown.
“Leaving?” Tomura replied with a frown of his own.
“But, but, you didn’t pay yet,” Izuku whispered, and Tomura’s eyebrows furrowed.
“Pay?” he repeated, but then froze, realization dawning on him. His eyes flitted to a nearby counter with a cash register. A cash register just like the one at the game store.
And like every other store he’d seen.
...Paying for items at shops wasn’t just a game balance thing, was it?
In the future, Tomura would shrug it off because hey, villain, why should he care about paying? But right now, he was a fourteen-year-old staring at a tote bag full of unintentionally stolen books.
One other thing he’d learned from video games: stealing summoned guards.
A LOT of guards.
And Izuku was still technically a missing person.
And at that moment, someone called, “Excuse me?”
Unknown to Izuku and Tomura, word had already started to spread around the mall. Not about a shoplifter, but about a crying little boy who may or may not be alone, and whose parents might be dead. And who had fled from a hero store and might have hidden in a store geared towards adults.
Needless to say, that was the exact sort of thing people reported to mall security.
And mall security took it especially seriously when that report came from a Pro Hero.
(Yamada Hizashi would have looked for the little listener himself, but it was his day off and he still needed to pick up a few more things. He’d only stopped at the hero merch store to pick up one of his new figurines to surprise Shouta by hiding it in his apartment. The man had given him a heart attack by waiting outside the bathroom after Hizashi’s shower with that creepy grin, this was totally fair play!)
So when one roaming security guard spotted a little boy who looked exactly like the little boy described by the off-duty hero, down to the Gang Orca plushie, he naturally went over to check in with the kid. Just to make sure everything was okay. At the very least, he seemed to know the boy he was talking to, so the guard figured he’d just say hi, make sure he wasn’t being actively kidnapped, and then head off to finish his rounds.
Tomura and Izuku, of course, had no way of knowing that.
And Tomura naturally reached a very different conclusion when he turned and saw a person in an apparent police uniform, and panicked.
Later, when confronted by Kurogiri about one particular decision she’d made, Aiko would only shrug. “Izuku is a technically missing child, so they might need to make a quick escape if someone recognized them,” she explained. “And what better way than a smoke bomb?”
Staring at the girl—still technically a minor by Japanese legal standards, since she wasn’t twenty yet—Kurogiri slowly came to the realization that he really was the only responsible adult in this place.
In the blink of an eye Tomura had retrieved a small smoke bomb from his hoodie’s pocket and threw it at the ground. Pink smoke exploded in an instant, causing people to shout in shock and horror. Tomura grabbed Izuku’s wrist—careful to keep one finger lifted as always—and bolted for the door.
Izuku, fully aware of his missing person status, put up no fight as he let himself be dragged through the smoke. However, he was still keenly aware of the fact that Tomura had the shirts in his bag. So he quickly grabbed what money he still had in his pockets and threw it in the direction of the counter. Not that he could see it through the smoke.
“Sorry-I-hope-that’s-enough-for-the-shirts!” he called, just before he and Tomura escaped the smoke screen. At this point, all the nearby shoppers had stopped to turn and stare at the shop suddenly filled with pink smoke, silently wondering if it was a Quirk accident.
All those eyes turned their way made Tomura and Izuku momentarily freeze, paralyzed with fear. Oh no. What if they might recognize Izuku too?
So, Tomura did the most natural thing he could think of.
He pulled out a second smoke bomb and threw it at the ground.
“Why did you give them MULTIPLE smoke bombs?”
“As backups in case one was a dud, or if they had to flee for an extended period of time.”
As before, Aiko’s logic did not really impress Kurogiri.
Tomura grabbed Izuku’s arm again as he ran once more into the smoke, blue this time. “Shit, Izuku, text Giri now!” he ordered in a harsh whisper.
“Okay!” Izuku replied, fumbling with his phone. It was hard to text with one hand and the smoke partially obscuring his vision, but he managed to send what he thought was a legible text asking them to pick him up at the mall.
(Meanwhile, Kurogiri stared blankly at the new text from Izuku. Texting in Japanese involved typing in hiragana, and then the phone trying to predict the kanji you wanted. Izuku had not been able to look at the screen closely though and make sure it was the proper characters. The result was a jumble of barely related kanji and hiragana.
Kurogiri quietly sighed, and opened the tracking app they’d installed to see where Izuku and Tomura were. There was only one reason the kids would be texting him after all.)
As Izuku hit send, Tomura managed to see a small figure through the smoke and swerved slightly to avoid them. Izuku, however, was too busy looking at his phone, and thus crashed into the person, making them both fall with startled cries. Tomura reflexively released his grip on Izuku so that he wouldn’t accidentally try to grip him with all five fingers, cursing as he did.
Izuku barely managed to keep from dropping his phone, and looked up to see the person he’d crashed into. It was another little boy around his age, with red and white hair. Even as Izuku scrambled to his feet, the little boy remained on the ground with a dazed look.
“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” Izuku blurted, holding out a hand to help him up. The boy stared at his hand blankly before taking it, allowing Izuku to pull him to his feet.
“I’m fine,” he said. The smoke was starting to clear a bit, letting Izuku see more of his face. His eyes were totally mismatched too, it kind of reminded him of how Ayane-nee sometimes went with a “total asymmetrical look” by making her hair two different colors and tracing different patterns on her skin.
Except the boy probably didn’t have a color change Quirk, which meant that red mark around his eye probably wasn’t just decorative like Ayane-nee would do.
“The skin around your eye is really red—oh my gosh, that’s not an allergic reaction to the smoke is it? That almost looks like a rash, oh no, I am so sorry! I—”
He was cut off by Tomura grabbing his shoulder and yanking, making him yelp. “No time for small chat, let’s go!” he shouted, dragging a now-horrified Izuku once more for the exit. Even as he ran he pulled out a third and fourth smoke bomb, throwing one down at their feet and tossing another in the distance. After all, if they only threw smoke bombs where they were going, it would be way easier to track them.
Green and orange exploded and filled the mall, and Izuku was starting to freak out because what if more people had allergic reactions? Still, he knew that if they stopped they’d probably get caught, and then he’d probably get taken away and he’d never see Tomura or Aiko or Kurogiri ever again. And that would be the worst first birthday gift to Kurogiri ever.
So all he could do was fight back tears and silently apologize to everyone around them as they fled to the designated exit.
And that was how Kurogiri discovered them. Bursting through the doors with colored smoke pouring out from behind them, Izuku silently crying and Tomura looking more panicked than he’d ever seen. “Go, go, go!” the teen shouted, and Kurogiri obligingly opened a warp gape to consume them.
By the time people stumbled out of the smoke, the trio were long gone.
And that was how Kurogiri’s first birthday party came to fruition.
The group all stood in the kitchen of their apartment, Izuku and Tomura looking fairly sheepish but also excited as Aiko put the cake on the table. The book totes sat on the table, waiting for Kurogiri to rummage through the contents. With the chaos of the escape, they hadn’t really been able to hide the presents, so they hadn’t bothered wrapping any of them.
For his part, Kurogiri just watched in silence as they put candles on the cake, feeling touched and also mildly exasperated. When the last one was placed Izuku couldn’t contain himself anymore and blurted, “Happy birthday Giri!”
“You did not have to go this far for me,” Kurogiri said. “I do not need a celebration or presents.”
“Just accept it already,” Tomura grunted, scratching at his neck. “We already went through all this trouble, we’re not wasting our efforts.”
“Stop that, Tomura,” Aiko scolded, lightly batting the teen’s hand away from his neck, and he scowled but obligingly lowered it.
“You do so much for us, we just wanted to make you happy!” Izuku said excitedly, bouncing where he stood. “We worked really hard to pick out good gifts! I really think you’ll like them!”
With Izuku so excited and happy, Kurogiri couldn’t really scold them. He would do that later for sure—they’d caused quite a mess at the mall from what he’d heard—but for now, he’d let them have this. After all, this was the first time any of them had shown such appreciation for him. It really did touch him.
“I’m sure I will,” he agreed gently, and Izuku beamed at him. Aiko blew five small puffs of smoke at the candles, lighting each one as they touched the wicks, and Izuku raced over to turn off the lights. In an instant the kitchen was cast in darkness, only the warm flickering candlelight illuminating the space.
“Alright, time to sing!” Aiko declared with a cheerful clap.
“Fuck no, if we sing that stupid song I’m leaving,” Tomura announced flatly, and Aiko faltered a bit before shrugging in acceptance.
“Eh, worth a shot.”
“Blow out the candles and make a wish!” Izuku cheered. Kurogiri blinked as he stared at the candles, wondering on the last part.
What, exactly, did he have to wish for? His life seemed perfectly complete and content at the moment. Tomura was growing well, Aiko seemed to be much happier than before, and they even had Izuku now to further brighten their lives. He had no particular desires of his own.
Well, perhaps he had one.
I wish for everyone here to always be able to find happiness.
He leaned over and obligingly blew out the candles, wisps of black mist shrouding and snuffing out the flames as they flickered past.
Five minutes later, Kurogiri and Aiko stared at two DVD covers with scantily clad women. Scantily clad women with very large breasts, and one with only censor bars to cover her more risqué features.
“Thank you, Izuku,” Kurogiri said almost mechanically, and the boy beamed as Kurogiri silently slid the DVDs back into the bag. This was one gift he would likely have to bury far in the back of his closet. Judging by the strained look on Aiko’s face as she stared at the bag, it might actually end up in the trash though.
“By the way, why’s the cake covered in lumpy circles?” Tomura asked as he poked at his slice with a fork. The cake had been decorated in chocolate icing, but Aiko had further decorated it with white circles. She broke eye contact with the bag to look at him with a frown.
“They’re supposed to be clouds,” she said with a pout. “I didn’t realize drawing with icing would be so hard.”
“Oh, I can kinda see it now!” Izuku exclaimed as he examined his own piece. “Why’d you decide on clouds though?”
“Just felt like it,” Aiko replied with a shrug. Kurogiri turned his attention to his own slice, staring at the white clouds. The slice she’d served him had a cloud that looked vaguely, vaguely like a head with pointy hair. Two lines had been carefully drawn on the head, meeting in the center with two spirals that backed against each other.
Sun Wukong, his brain supplied. An odd choice, but he shrugged it off as he speared the cake with his fork and tore off a chunk.
At least the cake tasted good.